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#Federal Law Clerk Hiring Best Practices

Q: What are the Federal Law Clerk Hiring Best Practices?

A: The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Best Practices (Best Practices) are voluntary guidelines for all federal judges, including circuit judges, district judges, bankruptcy judges, and magistrate judges. The Best Practices do not involve Supreme Court Justices.

Q: How can applicants determine whether a judge has a clerkship vacancy or if a judge is currently recruiting law clerks?

A: OSCAR allows prospective law clerk applicants to search a national database of federal law clerk vacancies. All federal judges are encouraged to list their vacancies on the site and indicate if they do not have a vacancy and are not accepting applications. Users may obtain a list of OSCAR participating judges and their application methods. The OSCAR judge profile lists a judge s hiring practices and preferences, including whether or not the judge is currently recruiting law clerks.

Q: When is the law clerk hiring period?

Q: When can a judge make an offer to an applicant and how much time does an applicant have to respond to an offer?

A: Judges may offer positions at any time according to their own schedules. Judges individually decide their clerkship offer terms and post their hiring preferences and practices in their OSCAR judge profiles. Judges using Best Practices do not require an applicant to accept an offer immediately without reasonable time to weigh it against other viable offers. This does not prohibit an applicant from accepting an offer on the spot. Law schools remind their students that they need not accept the first offer that they receive; rather, applicants are counseled to weigh any offer against other viable options that remain open to them.